The Emilia Romagna region is famous for producing some of Italy’s most famous products: proscuitto (or Parma ham as we sometimes call it in the UK), Parmigiano Reggiano (parmesan cheese), and Tagliatelle al Ragù (spag bol). This, and it’s surprising lack of tourists, makes a strong position for our new life in Italy and so we spent a week in the region savouring all it had to offer. Basing ourselves in Bologna, we set out for our first dinner. I have to admit at this point that I was really craving a curry (having not eaten spicy food in a month) and was reasonably grumpy that the Indian restaurant we were planning on eating at was closed down. But it must have been fate, as we chanced upon our first experience of true Tagliatelle al Ragù. The first documented existence of the dish comes from Imola, near Bologna, and is from the 18th century. The old recipe uses veal mince as the meat in the sauce, and involves very slow cooking methods. It is somewhat stating the obvious that fresh pasta in Italy is incredible, but it does always surprise me somewhat just how great a difference there is in taste between this and shop bought pasta (for such a staple ingredient). The tagliatelle here was so light, thin and delicate; the perfect vehicle for the ragù which was flavourful but not too overpowering.
Our second mind-blowing pasta experience in this region was eating Lasagne at Osteria da Ermes. It was one of those bizarre experiences where you smell delicious food smells coming out into the streets, go inside the restaurant to investigate, are swept up by a larger than life Italian character who was cracking all sorts of Italian jokes you can’t understand, and get ushered to share a table with another couple. No menu. Do you want red or white wine (it is lunchtime, so drinking a bottle is a given)? We have lasagne and taglietelle today, which do you want? We’ll have one of each. Easy, fun dining. We got chatting to the Modenese couple next to us who said that they come here a lot, and that Ermes (the jovial character who we were greeted by), is the heart of this place. They were just having lunch together and then had to return to work (after a whole bottle of wine?!), which just reiterated why the quality of life here is so great. The lasagne was fantastic; spinach pasta giving it’s characteristic green color, and many many thin layers of the lasagna pasta giving it a melt-in-the-mouth texture. Modena is also the home of balsamic vinegar, and we were lucky to taste a couple of wonderful samples of their various aged varieties.
Also on our Romagnan voyage we stopped in Parma for 2 nights. We were pretty excited for the cheese and ham adventures ahead. We headed to a restaurant called La Greppia. A highlight for me were the courgette flowers stuffed with a creamy parmesan filling;having seen courgette flowers in every basic Italian supermarket I decided I needed to try them before attempting to cook them for myself. After dinner we were treated to some sliced of Parmigiano Reggiano, chiselled off the huge piece pictured above. We were slighly too full to enjoy this volume of strong cheese after dinner (I guess we are not hard core parmesan-snackers just yet) but it was definitely a fun experience. Our English name of “Parmesan” forgets to give credit to Reggio Emilia, the other province where this cheese is produced. We were given some at breakfast in our bnb along with some prociutto, and were also treated to some Rice Cake which is another local specialty of the Reggio province. It is made with eggs, milk, rice, sugar and butter and baked in the oven. It tastes like a set rice pudding, and is absolutely delicious!
On our second extravagant dinner we went to La Forchetta. We shared a deliciously light, moist tortelli with pumpkin and butter filling and grated parmesan. I followed this with a steak accompanied with a deliciously sweet balsamic glaze, and rocket parmesan salad. Matt got the seabass which was very cleverly cooked wrapped with spinach and then thin slices of potato (we had missed out on the horse tartar which was sold out; we are told that horse meat is very popular in this region). For dessert we had a local torta, which turned out to be crunchy biscuits with hazelnuts and a sugar dusting. After much discussion we concluded that this was the best food we’ve eaten in Italy so far, as the restaurant’s food wowed us from start to finish; every course was amazing, and the service and atmosphere was the right balance between fancy and friendly.
Cena con Zena 
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